“I find [Leaves of Grass] the most
extraordinary piece of wit & wisdom that America has yet contributed. . .
. I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a
long foreground somewhere, for such a start.”

I am not unaware that the charge of
coarseness and sensuality has been affixed to them. My moral constitution may
be hopelessly tainted or - too sound to be tainted, as the critic wills, but
I confess that I extract no poison from these Leaves - to me they have
brought only healing. --Fanny Fern, critic and popular essayist

There are too many persons, who imagine
they demonstrate their superiority to their fellows, by disregarding all the
politenesses and decencies of life, and, therefore,justify themselves in
indulging the vilest imaginings and shamefullest license. (Rufus Griswold, The
Criterion)

“Every Sunday there were half a dozen
old roosters who would come into my ward and preach and pray and sing to us,
while we were swearing to ourselves all the time, and wishing the blamed old
fools would go away. Walt Whitman’s funny stories, and his pipes and
tobaccos, were worth more than all the preachers and tracts in Christendom.”